Reviews
1971’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was originally titled It Drinks Hippie Blood and was a satire on 1960s counterculture. And then John Hancock got involved and, one rewrite later, out popped this much more straightforward but rather superior horror movie setting out to unsettle rather than amuse. Hancock also directs, in his feature debut, … Read more
A heist movie done as slow cinema, The Delinquents (aka Los Delincuentes) sets up genre expectations then delivers them with a twist. But mostly doesn’t deliver them at all. What a strange, big beast of a film Rodrigo Moreno has given us. Moreno gets straight into the meat of his story – Morán (Daniel Elías), … Read more
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 As Far As I Know (Legjobb tudomásom szerint in the original Hungarian) is the smart and subtle feature debut of Nándor Lörincz and Bálint Nagy, a writing/directing duo who have been working together for ten years, with a run of shorts and a couple … Read more
A good way of coming at National Anthem, Luke Gilford’s debut feature, is to know a little bit about his own life. He grew up in Colorado, the son of a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Getting older, he became uneasy at, his words, how homophobic and patriarchal the rodeo was, and yet … Read more
Deerskin is a film about the film-making process, or a film about a man in the grip of a massive self-delusion, or one about the making of a serial killer, take your pick. It’s a comedy and it made me laugh several times, often simply because it is Jean Dujardin as the man at the … Read more
Write what you know, they say. Les Pires (The Worst Ones in English) is the debut movie by two former casting directors, Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, telling the story of what happens when a film company comes to your disadvantaged part of town, picks your sorry ass out of a heap of fellow nobodies … Read more
The vampire genre gets reinvented every few years. Trouble Every Day is Claire Denis doing it definitively in 2001, a few years before Tomas Alfredson gave it the IKEA flatpack refit with Let the Right One In and Ana Lily Amanpour boldly put an Iranian spin on the whole thing with A Girl Walks Home … Read more
Every Little Thing is a documentary about a hummingbird sanctuary. A funny sort of documentary if you’re interested in the birds themselves and want to know how much they weigh, or how long they live, what they feed on or how big their eggs are – tiny, presumably, since the birds are only as big … Read more
If you want it enough you can have it. Believe. Be passionate. Follow your dream. Movies are often insistent on this point. The Disciple begs to differ. You wouldn’t guess from his face, but Sharad (Aditya Modak) has it all. He plays raags, as this Mahrathi-language film calls them, ragas, most likely, if you’re an … Read more
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 You’re either a fan of the wacky, the quirky and the whimsical or you’re not. All Sorts is all three and yet manages to avoid the trap of believing that zaniness trumps everything else, and that it’s a licence to ignore the other considerations … Read more
So what else did Darth Vader do? It’s often forgotten that James Earl Jones, the voice (though not the body – that was Dave Prowse) behind the galaxy’s most badass dad had an acting life away from Star Wars. Exhibit A – 1974’s Claudine, in which he goes toe to toe with Diahann Carroll in … Read more
Can the might of the communist system in 1960s Hungary defeat an Undead vampire? Comrade Drakulich (aka Drakulics Elvtárs) has a bit of fun finding out. Mária Magyar (Lili Walters) is a pretty, junior-level Hungarian spy detailed to escort Béla Fábián (Zsolt Nagy), hero of the worldwide communist revolution, on a tour of his mother … Read more